With standard radio broadcast over AM/FM frequencies, the target audience is essentially determined by the program format and the geographic coverage of the radio station. Radio broadcasters typically determine the numbers and demographics of their listener base by using statistical sampling techniques that are collected by a third party organization. These statistics are referred to as the Arbitron ratings. These ratings are crucial to the setting of advertising fees for the radio station, and are a major decision making tool for advertisers in determining where and how to place their advertisements.
However, advertisers prefer to direct their message to highly targeted listeners to increase the chance that the listener will act on the advertising message. With the Arbitron rating system, it is very difficult for an advertiser to judge the effectiveness of their campaign. This is because the advertiser and/or radio station simply cannot determined how many and what kind of people hear the advertising message with very much accuracy.
Some radio stations now simulcast their programming via the Internet (i.e. Internet radio) either directly from their own web site, or through an intermediary such as Yahoo!™ or another third party provider. Although the Internet medium has the inherent ability to provide information about the listener back to the broadcaster, to date there is no implementation(s) that take advantage of the Internet medium in this manner.
An advantage to the broadcaster and its advertising clients to using the Internet as a broadcast medium is that the programming can reach people who are in front of a computer rather than the radio, such as people who are at work, who would otherwise not be listening to the radio. The Internet medium also allows people who are out of range of a particular conventional over-the-air broadcast signal, to be able to listen to the broadcast programming.
A current disadvantage in utilizing the Internet as a distribution vehicle is that the advertising content may be completely out of context to a listener. This may occur when the listener is out of range of the over-the-air (i.e. AM/FM) broadcast signal. A person in New York, for example, listening to an Internet broadcast of a Houston radio station program, will not likely have an interest in advertising focused on the Houston location of the broadcaster. Hence the value of increasing listenership via the Internet does not have the same financial benefit as increased listenership within the AM/FM broadcast range.
The above discussion is also applicable to any type of originally broadcast multimedia programming that is being provided over the Internet, concurrently or not.
Thus, there is a need for providing Internet multimedia content that contains advertisements for a particular listener.
As well, there is a need to provide Internet multimedia content simultaneously to a plurality of listeners.
Additionally, there is a need to offer and provide a plurality of stations of multimedia content via the Internet simultaneously to a plurality of users.